All this rankings is a nonsense.
1) Ranking by eye test? Modern players face better defense and goalies, they're already better than old players in a vacuum. Simply put one NHL star in AHL and you will see same kind of dominance in dekes and scoring.
2) Ranking players by hardware? Nowadays, we have more talents per team and Salary Cap teams, it's almost impossible to dominate long enough and collect all trophies every year.
3) Ranking by points? There are different role players with different set of tools which gives different number of points, but they all can give equal contribution to the win. Like Datsyukian 2-way play could win against Crosby's offense any given day and vice versa. Saying, one is better than other just because of points it's unfair and biased view of things.
4) Ranking by ppg? Injuries aren't always unfortunate, sometimes, player's style of play will attract more attention and willing to hurt him, therefore, you can't expect them to continue the same way all season. If Lemieux wouldn't miss his games because of cancer, how you can be so sure, someone wouldn't break his legs later? Besides, helping your team over more games with less ppg is often more valuable than causing blowouts in half less games.
5)Ranking by peaks? Still not enough. Elite players at their peak can easily destroy and dominate each others. Peaks are too high and often don't happen in same time for different players, therefore, for each peak is different context. Peaks with different context (League's scoring, team's performance, other players slump years), are different.
You can argue Crosby's 4 all time, but after 3rd place, it goes by tiers, he might easily share 4th place with many others players.
